RE: Treatment of Contaminated Personnel -Reply

["Richards, David" <david.richards@rfets.gov>]

Michael,

I appreciate your comments but your concept of the Incident Command System
is somewhat skewed. What you are really talking about is Emergency
Management activities that occur generally some time after initial response
has occurred, normally at some sort of remote response facility such as an
EOC, TSC and/or EOF. A properly implemented IC system is an immediate
response structure that is really only designed for organization and
operations at the INCIDENT SCENE. It's true that many places have
bastardized the IC concept pretty badly and refer to their "top dog" in the
Emergency Operations Center as the Incident Commander, but it is really just
that, a bastardization of the Incident Command System concepts. This is a
result of poor integration of the Incident Command System, designed for
field level operations, and the EOC concept, which is designed to augment
the field level response for situations with protracted events and/or
consequences beyond the immediate area of the event. The IC handles event
scene activities and the EOC relieves the IC of larger peripheral issues
such as protective actions beyond the immediate event area, notification of
and coordination with offsite agencies, media relations, and logistical
support to on-scene responders.

The ICS response concept grew out of fire response circles and came into
some level of prominence in the nuclear facility emergency management arena
after the promulgation of 29 CFR 1910.120 requirements for emergency
response capability. Lots of organizations, especially the DOE, specified
that the ICS concepts should be integrated into emergency management
programs. This WAS a good idea. However, the focus was lost at lots of
places by attempts to blindly implement the concepts and terminology without
adequate appreciation of or consideration for the larger issues that the ICS
simply wasn't designed to handle. Like I said before, poor integration.

DJ Richards
Hazards Assessment Team Leader
Emergency Preparedness
Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site
David.Richards@rfets.gov
djrichards@earthlink.net

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Michael S Ford [SMTP:MFORD%Pantex.com@inet.rfets.gov]
> Sent:	Wednesday, March 03, 1999 10:44 AM
> To:	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject:	RE: Treatment of Contaminated Personnel -Reply
> 
> Rick makes a very good point about the value of an incident
> command structure for emergency response.  However, an IC group
> is only useful for a prolonged response or recovery where there is
> an opportunity and sufficient support for a command group to
> assemble and begin to analyze an incident scene.
> 
> If there is an incident at a remote location with personnel casualties
> -- during transportation, well-logging, industrial radiography, etc. --
> local police, fire department responders or paramedics will typically
> arrive hours to days before a radiological assistance team can
> assemble and be dispatch to the incident site.  By that time, a
> non-ambulatory casualty in a very high dose rate area will have
> been removed (and local responders exposed) or will still be on
> scene and perhaps past the CNS death threshold.
> 
> In the highest probability incidents (i.e., public sector) and with few
> exceptions, life-savings actions will have commenced and possibly
> completed (or abandoned) long before the folks with all of the
> proper training and equipment show up.  In those cases, the
> radiological assistance folks basically perform a recovery operation.
> 
> This points to the need of providing at least some degree of training
> to the local initial responders who have little to no equipment, an
> at-best cursory understanding of the hazards and are often exposed
> to the highest risk without realizing it.
> 
> Have a great day!
> v/r
> Michael
> mford@pantex.com
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